[2] Educated at Blundell's School and at Balliol College, Oxford, Irving sat the Indian Civil Service exams in 1898 and arrived in India on 10 November 1899.

In March 1919, the enactment of the Rowlatt Act, which imposed stricter press censorship, arbitrary and warrantless searches and detention without trial, triggered massive protests across India.

In response to the Act's passage, Mahatma Gandhi called for a general strike (hartal) to begin on 30 March as part of a peaceful satyagraha.

[7] On 30 March, the Amritsar satyagraha movement was launched by a Dr. Satyapal, a local general practitioner, and his friend Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew, a barrister who had studied at Cambridge University and was close to Gandhi, having known him since 1909.

[9] With O'Dwyer giving his approval, on the morning of 10 April Irving invited Satyapal and Kitchlew to a private meeting at his official residence in the British cantonment, located in the Civil Lines area.